Man is slain with a shovel

He apparently was trying to protect woman who was being yelled at.

By Michelle Mondommondo@express-news.net

Published 11:35 pm, Thursday, December 30, 2010

Holding the weapon he'd already used to beat the man to the ground, the killer stood over his lifeless body and drove the front end of the large shovel at the man's head again and again, a police report states.

The victim, a man in his 30s, was declared dead just after 6 a.m. Thursday. His body was sprawled on the sidewalk in the 2500 block of Clara Lane, in front of the apartment where he was attacked while trying to protect a woman who lived there, a police report says.

And while the description of the victim's last minutes were detailed in the police report, information about the relationships among those involved and what prompted the killer to go to the apartment in the first place remained murky.

Neighbors at the Sendero Apartments were reluctant to talk about the incident, and those who did wouldn't give their names. They said a woman and her two children lived in the apartment and identified the attacker as her ex. Some said he'd just gotten out of prison and was the father of her children.

The neighbors said they didn't know the victim or the woman. His name won't be released until after an autopsy is performed today, although the Bexar County medical examiner has a tentative ID.

Police Sgt. Marcial Luevano said at the scene that the homicide and an assault that preceded it appeared to stem from a domestic disturbance, but he didn't confirm the relationships among the three.

Police initially were sent to the apartment on an assault call before 6 a.m., the report said.

The woman and the victim were in her apartment when they heard banging at the door. A man kicked in the door and began arguing with them, police said.

No information was available on whether children were in the apartment.

When the woman told the man to leave, he refused and became “increasingly hostile,” the report said. Fearing that the woman might be hurt, the man with her punched the intruder in the face.

The intruder left and returned “a short time later” carrying the shovel, police said. He began another fight and struck the victim in the head and face multiple times until he fell down, the report states.

The woman told police the victim was unconscious and unresponsive.

The attacker asked her to leave with him and she refused, police said. He drove away but came back, and as the woman stood over the victim, the attacker yelled at her to leave with him.

She ran into the apartment. A witness told police the attacker then stood over the man's body and struck him with the front end of the shovel.

At the scene Thursday afternoon, a woman, tears in her eyes, asked how she could find out who was killed.

“I think it could be my cousin,” she said.

After speaking to an officer, she grabbed her phone and jumped back into her car.

As she drove away, a hazmat crew suited up. More than eight hours after the victim's bludgeoned body hit the ground, the street needed to be cleaned of his blood.